Longtime boxing, football referee Elmo Adolph dies

Elmo Adolph, who spent more than 40 years as a high school football referee and a globe-trotting boxing referee and served a brief stint as the recreation director in St. Charles Parish, died Thursday at his home in Destrehan of an apparent heart attack, his family said. He was 78.

Elmo Adolph

Born in New Orleans, Adolph graduated from Warren Easton High School and earned a degree in sociology from Southeastern Louisiana University.

A too-handsome-to-be great boxer in his youth, Adolph eventually was asked to help train some young local fighters. Then he was approached to become a referee."Jimmy Perrin, who was the chief of officials at the time, said, 'We need you to referee,'" Adolph said in a 2008 interview in which he announced his retirement. "I said, 'I don't know anything about refereeing.' Then Jimmy said, 'You know how to box. You know the rules. Get in the ring.' I did and that night I refereed 17 bouts.'"

From that auspicious beginning, Adolph went on to a career as a world-renowned boxing official, which took him to 76 cities and more than a dozen countries. When he retired , Adolph estimated he had officiated more than 23,000 amateur boxing bouts and at least 1,000 professional matches, including 32 world championship fights and bouts that included Roberto Duran and Larry Holmes. He was in the ring for the 1999 fight between Roy Jones and Reggie Johnson.

He was the only man to officiate a professional world championship fight and an Olympic gold medal fight (Seoul), and one of only 16 referees from the United States ever invited to officiate the Olympic games.

"His boxing career was far from his only involvement in the sports world," said Doug Ireland, the Chairman of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame "Elmo worked world championship and Olympic fights, but he enjoyed telling stories about high school football officiating just as much, for example. No question that his greatest impact came in boxing, where many experts regarded him among the best ever to officiate."

Adolph served the New Orleans area as a high school football referee for more than 30 years. Even after his 2008 retirement, he worked the clock at many River Parishes games on Friday nights.

Adolph was inducted in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2011, receiving the Dave Dixon Leadership Award, and returned this summer for his first and only Walk of Legends. He also is a member of the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame, the USA Southern Boxing Hall of Fame, the Warren Easton High School Hall of Fame, the USBA Referees Hall of Fame and the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame.

He was the director of recreation in St. Charles Parish from 1990 to 1991, and he was able to pull together a department that was struggling to keep up with an influx of new residents, former parish president Albert Laque said.

"He saw what was going on there and gave me a presentation about how he could do better, so I hired him," Laque said Thursday.

Adolph left the job after Laque lost his re-election bid in 1991.

"Elmo had tremendous passion for everything he did and every one he met," Ireland said. "He was among the most enthusiastic members of the Hall of Fame, not only with his pride in being enshrined, but in his joy of making new friends at each year's induction."

"Adolph is survived by his wife of 58 years, Jean; his children Vance, Vicki, Vince and Valette, and several grand-children.

A funeral service will be held at Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Pontchartrain Blvd., Monday at
2 p.m. Interment will follow in Metairie Cemetery. Visitation will
be held on Sunday from 5:30 p.m until 8 p.m., and Monday from noon until service time.